


With This Ring

by recoveringrabbit



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Light Angst, post 5x22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 23:25:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14725593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recoveringrabbit/pseuds/recoveringrabbit
Summary: In which symbols are important,ORRabbit works out her feelings through fic[a post-rescuing Cryo!Fitz future fic]





	With This Ring

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings, guys, which I have distilled into less than a thousand words. It's the first drop in a bucket, I expect.
> 
> This fic discusses the implications of the events of 5x22, but does not directly reference them. Be warned, if you're avoiding that kind of thing.

“I’ve had an idea,” Fitz says, “but I want it to be your decision, so don’t try to spare my feelings about it.”

“I never—”

“Yeah, Jemma, you do about things like this.”

His voice is so serious that she immediately turns off her bunsen burner and takes off her goggles, abandoning her experiment without a second thought. “What is it?”

“It’s about these.”

He comes up behind her and snags the shallow dish from the shelf above her bench, pulling it forward with one finger until they can both look down at the contents: her diamond ring, which she’s just removed to put on her gloves, and Fitz’s gold band, which he’s never worn.

“I think,” he says, “I should wear a new one.”

They’re planning another wedding—a legal one this time, which means Daisy is hard at work making them legitimate again, and one that he will remember for himself—and until that day happens, she’s been keeping both their rings safe at his request. But she never, never thought he wouldn’t want it back. Ducking her chin, corners of her mouth tucked carefully in, she puts her own hand over the rings. “Why?”

He won’t have brought it up without a good reason, and the trembling hand under hers speaks clearly of his reluctance to say anything at all. She waits, grateful they have all the time they need to finish the conversation.

“If you had been married to someone else,” he says finally, “someone not me at all, you wouldn’t give me his ring, and I would never ask you to. It’s not exactly the same thing, I know, but it’s comparable, at least. I don’t think it’s fair to ask—”

Her question quavers. “Ask you to take it?”

“Ask you to _give_ it.” His lips purse and he shakes his head, lamenting, yet again, what their lives have become. “I’m not the man you married with this ring, not really. I don’t want you to have to pretend that doesn’t matter.”

She closes her eyes, but they can both see the ghost in the room—the Fitz who rescued her from slavery, the Fitz who built a time machine and made a plane into a spaceship, the Fitz who took the weight of the world until it broke him, the Fitz who kissed her in a forest from a nightmare and called her wife like it was a dream—that spectre will never completely leave them. It does matter, but not as much as he thinks.

It is her turn to consider her next words, and she lets go of him to dispose of her gloves before taking his hand in both of hers. “The way I see it,” she says, tightening her grip, “it’s as though my husband got amnesia, and I’m only saying again what I’ve already promised him so he can remember it for himself. I’d be happy for you to put this on today, if you wanted. But if you feel like you’re taking a dead man’s leavings, we can get new ones and put these away.”

“You are not a leftover.” He raises their hands and kisses the back of hers. “It’s nothing to do with me, really. It’s you. You’re the one with a life I wasn’t part of. I don’t want to—to run over it like a bus.”

“Fitz.” She lets go of the clasp to put both hands over his heart, which thumps reassuringly every one of the million times she checks it. “You _are_ my life. You’ve been part of it every day since we were sixteen—all you’re missing is the memory of a few weeks.”

“Important weeks,” he says.

“Yes,” she agrees. She cannot and will not deny it. “But not more important than the whole of our life.”

He stares over her shoulder for a moment, frowning, but his eyes are clear when they meet her patient ones. “There’s logic for you. Honestly, it seems like you ought to have a harder time with this.”

“I had some time to sort it out, while you were still sleeping. And there will be more to sort, I know, but for now—well, here we are.”

Here they are.

He leans forward to kiss her and leaves his forehead pressed against hers when he speaks. “You don’t have to get a new ring on my account. I know that one has sentimental value.”

“Of course it does, it’s the ring you married me with.”

“I was actually referring to the fact that our adult grandson chose it.” She laughs, moving her forehead to her shoulder, and a smile flashes across his face before being swallowed again. “I mean, you have all these memories attached to that ring, and I would too. I don’t mind giving it again. I don’t want you to mind, though, whatever we do. We’re married. That’s the important thing. So, what do you think?”

At that moment, she has no response but to kiss him, so she does. When they get married—again, for the first time legally, they don’t care—she slides the old gold band on his finger, a symbol of her love and commitment to him in every potential future. And he gives her a new gold band that sits snugly against the charity shop diamond, a symbol of the reality of her life with someone not quite him, but who made the same vows and meant them just as much. And they first thing they do when the celebrations are done is weld old and new together, so that for the rest of their long lives neither can tell where one stops and the other begins. 


End file.
